Rackspace shares jumped 9 percent in initial after-hours trading Monday after the company announced third-quarter profit that beat company projections and analysts’ expectations.

The San Antonio-based managed cloud company reported third-quarter net income at $37 million, up 42 percent over the third quarter a year ago. Earnings per share was 26 cents, which was about 6 cents above analysts’ estimates.

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Revenue also was up for the quarter, coming in at $509 million, an increase of 11 percent.

CEO Taylor Rhodes attributed the strong performance to the closing of several large deals that had taken a long time to finalize — such as becoming a support provider to Amazon Web Services and partnering with Intel to open the OpenStack Innovation Center — and growth in its public cloud offering due to “progress in our product road map” and increased usage as e-commerce customers ramped up for their busiest season.

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“We’re proud of the financial results that we delivered in the third quarter,” Rhodes said. “We’re excited about the new products and partnerships that we’ve launched in recent months, with Amazon Web Services, Intel and Microsoft(Rackspace now supports to Microsoft Assure, Microsoft Private Cloud and Office 365). These initiatives will make us more competitive and will drive our growth in the future.”

Rackspace also has launched Rackspace Managed Security Services, which adds cybersecurity support to its menu of offerings, Rhodes said.

“For years, we’ve built deep expertise and experience in cybersecurity,” Rhodes said. “Now we’re productizing all the investments that we’ve made in securing our own infrastructure and are offering our expertise and tool sets.”

While the third quarter finished better than guidance provided during the second-quarter earnings call, Rhodes narrowed the guidance for the fourth quarter to a 2 to 3 percent growth rate, citing the third-quarter jump. He said customers also were expected to ramp down information technology projects and to use less cloud space in December.

“Amid these normal fluctuations, the state of our core business is healthy,” Rhodes said. “We continue to grow and create high customer loyalty, which in turn keeps churn consistently low.”

Shares reached a high of $79.24 in January 2013, but have been falling in value due to slowed revenue growth as Rackspace has faced heightened competition in cloud services. The stock closed Monday at $27.09.

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As for the Amazon deal, analysts at Evercore said the cloud services market generated roughly $100 million in revenue, which for now “wouldn’t move the needle all that much” considering Rackspace’s $200 million in annual revenue, according to the Wall Street Journal.

“I agree on the (results of the deal will) ‘take time,’ but I also believe that $100 million is somewhat of a myopic view since you have an AWS ecosystem growing at 80 percent at $8 billion,” Rhodes said of the analysis. “If a fraction of those customers want managed services over time, we think we can do much better than other players in the market. So we think it’s a big opportunity and we’re going for it.”

Tim Beyers, an analyst who writes for the Motley Fool, said the earnings report was a good one.

He said he was struck more by the company’s announcement Monday that it was offering $350 million in notes over 10 years, with proceeds being used to repay existing debt and to buy back shares at a low price.

“If they’re going to buy back some shares with debt, the terms better be pretty advantageous,” he said. “Because what they’re going to do is use that debt to repurchase and retire shares, which will be used to calculate their earnings per share number.”

“It’s the kind of thing you do when either you’re desperate or you’re super confident in your business and your ability to generate meaningfully higher returns,” he added. “I think it’s probably closer to the latter. I don’t think Rackspace is desperate. … It’s a very aggressive bet. What this signals is that Rackspace is highly confident in its ability to generate value.”